Just Desserts
by spirallingminuetto
Summary: Valentine's Day. Gone are the days of Anna slipping messy cut-out paper hearts under Elsa's door in return for chilly silence, and glum hours eating cherub-shaped gourmet truffles alone in the gallery, longing for the tenderness and affection captured in all of those romantic historical portraits. [Fluff and sisterly love abound]


Disclaimer: Frozen belongs to Disney.

Early on Valentine's Day morning - super early, with full moon and stars still bright in the sky - a storm sweeps through the palace kitchens.

Elsa is asleep, dream-deep in satin sheets - Anna knows because she left her that way some, oh, three hours ago, tiptoeing from her sister's bed with all the stealth she could summon (which, incidentally, isn't much, but Elsa barely even stirred when that one creaky floorboard snuck its sneaky way beneath Anna's foot) - but down amongst the pots and pans and various other kitchen stuff Anna can't identify by name, chaos reigns. Anna dashes around like a headless snowman, leaving flurries and trails of cocoa and caramel and pastry and powdered sugar in her wake as she pours and measures and mixes, following - and failing to follow - instructions from a cookery book she's convinced is from Ye Olden times for all of the sense it's making.

Perhaps she should've practiced one recipe before attempting the perfection of five at once.

But tomorrow - or, today... _it's gone four am already, uh oh_ - is VALENTINE'S DAY. The very first since the gates opened and Elsa's heart opened and the world opened into something bright and new and wonderful. Gone are the days of Anna slipping messy cut-out paper hearts under Elsa's door in return for chilly silence, and glum hours eating cherub-shaped gourmet truffles alone in the gallery, longing for the tenderness and affection captured in all of those romantic historical portraits. This year, she has never felt more love or been more loved, and she's going to celebrate that with the person she loves most: her sister.

Starting with chocolate. Lots and lots of chocolate. Nothing says love like chocolate.

She hopes.

Olaf's carrot nose pokes over the edge of the counter where a flustered Anna is absolutely stirring ganache, crushing a bag of hazelnuts underfoot, and one-handedly rolling out a ball of chocolate pastry all at once, just you watch her.

"You know I'm a great ambassador for ambition, especially _your_ ambitions which are always so fun and exciting, but maybe this was, I don't know, kind of ambitious?"

"Ambitious, shmambitious," Anna declares - albeit through gritted teeth. Her arms are beginning to ache. "I want to surprise Elsa. She deserves it. I want the day to be special."

Olaf smiles, touches a twiggy hand to Anna's busy, busy arm (the other one is busier). "You could have baked her a single cookie and the day would be special for her." He says, and then, looking over at the growing spread of desserts on the other counter, "What we've got going on here is an exercise in the craft of making a day super, duper special. Remind me, what are those things again, the little round thingies?"

Anna follows the direction of Olaf's extended arm to the platter of pale gold, bite-size pastries. "Profiteroles," she says with a wince. The cream was a nightmare to pipe into them, and all of them look a little... anaemic. "But they don't have chocolate yet." There's still so much left to do, she thinks. She has perhaps another hour before the kitchen staff begin to trickle in, bleary-eyed and breakfast bound; _ohhh_, they're going to be so mad about the mess. She hopes they don't tell her off too strongly - it's Valentine's Day! Love and let love!

"Uh huh. And what's that?"

A teetering, three-tiered mess of cherries, chocolate and dribbling white cream haphazardly propped up with a wooden spoon.

"That's a, uh, Black Forest gateau. Mostly."

_If you squint really, really hard._

"Uh huh. And that one there, remind me?"

Another well-meaning mess: oozing chocolate and crumbling pastry.

"Oh that's - " She frowns, tilts her head this way, then that way. "You know, I don't even know what that is. But it smells _amazing_."

"Uh huh. And what's - "

" - oh Olaf, careful, you're getting snow in the ganache!" Olaf looks up at his flurry, which is sure enough flurrying right into the pan of melting cream and chocolate, and promptly hops back with an apology. "It's okay, just... be careful, okay? Here," she kicks the bag of hazelnuts over to him, "crush these." After a moment, the bag is crunch-crunch-crunching much more efficiently under Olaf's body than they had been under Anna's foot.

"Can I ask now?" He says, at length.

Anna flips the pastry over, starts rolling it in the other direction. A lock of copper hair falls in front of her eyes. "Ask what?" she huffs, attempting - and failing (twice) - to blow it out of the way. No wonder they have so much kitchen staff; baking is a ten-woman job.

"Ask what's burning?"

"What's bur - ? Oh no!"

Anna whips around so fast, she knocks Olaf's head off with a rolling pin, sending it flying across the room. His muffled exclamation barely registers as she hurries to the stove, where the first treacherous tendrils of smoke signify the certain death of the cookies inside. "No, no, no, no!" Without thinking, she reaches in and yanks out the piping hot tray with her bare hands, yelping as she shoves it onto the nearest counter.

She looks down at her palms, wincing at the searing hot welts already emerging on her dainty, pale fingers. Tears spring to her eyes.

Somewhere across the kitchen, Olaf's disembodied head calls out: "Anna, the ganache!"

Anna frowns, attention snapping back to the now-smoking pan on the OTHER stove. "Oh damn it!" She rushes over, stumbling over Olaf's decapitated body on the way, and elbows the pan off of the heat. Right on cue it topples over, and the ruined ganache spills across the counter, a dark, dramatic flood of deliciousness now utterly, absolutely unsalvageable.

Anna whimpers in pain and hot, heartbroken disbelief.

"Anna, are you okay?"

Across the kitchen, the devastation is - oh no (Anna's bottom lip trembles) it's so much worse. Olaf's dear head, to her horror, is semi-embedded in the messy, totally collapsed remains of what was already only tentatively a black forest gateau, and scattered all around are the little golden puffs of pastry that she'd been quite happy to accept as profiteroles. Somehow even the unidentifiable dish of gooey chocolate and weathered pastry looks worse than before. Everything, every heartfelt effort, every splash and dollop and crumb, seems to be laughing at her. Anna, feeling the crushing weight of failure press on her slender shoulders, slumps against the counter, looking down at her raw, throbbing hands. Her flesh is crying out for something cool, but Anna finds she is too deflated to move. Somehow the burn of disappointment is worse than the fiery pulse in her hands.

"Oh Olaf..." she sniffles, shaking her head. Tears fall onto her open palms. "What am I doing here? I can barely eat without making a royal mess let alone bake. I should have let the cooks help, they did offer." In fact, they had insisted, Anna thinks, but that's neither here nor there. She had insisted that she could cope without them and, as the princess, she had gotten her way.

"Your heart was in the right place," Olaf gently reassures her.

"Anna?"

_Oh no._

Anna looks over at the door and - _oh no; oh **yes**_ - finds Elsa standing at the kitchen entrance, gaping at the sticky, powdery, chocolate-y aftermath of Hurricane Anna: domestic goddess. Or, god-less. There is evidently nothing divine about her ill-fated dabbles in domesticity.

The burn of disappointment deepens and spreads, fanning the flames of humiliation.

"Oh Anna, what happened?"

She steps into the kitchen, surveying the damage, a vision of queenly elegance even wrapped in a pale blue silk night robe, and all the more lovely for it among the chaos that surrounds her. Anna's mouth works wordlessly for a moment, a stammering, hopeless attempt to excuse herself and everything her dear sister is seeing on the edge of her teeth. But there are no excuses. Everything is what it is.

And what it is, is a shocking disaster.

"I - I wanted to surprise you," she finally manages, watching Elsa move further into the room, further into the sticky disarray . "For Valentine's Day. Which is today."

A soft, oh-so-patient smile graces Elsa's lips as she carefully sidesteps a random puddle of milk._ Or was that cream?_ Anna had confused them a couple of times. _Stupid Ye Olde recipe book_. "I know," Elsa says, "you've only reminded me multiple times every day for the past week. Oh, Olaf- "

Around a mouthful of kind-of gateau, Olaf - or, Olaf's head - greets their unexpected visitor: "Hi Elsa. Hey Anna, you shouldn't worry because this is really delicious - oh, thanks Elsa."

Anna, not taking Olaf's effusive critique to heart, watches as Elsa gently removes Olaf's head from the gateau's unceremoniously buckled remains and brings it around to his body - which, Anna realises, hasn't actually stopped jumping up and down on the bag of hazelnuts (now a fine hazelnut dust).

Elsa drops Olaf's head back onto his shoulders, giggling softly. "There you go, little guy." She looks over at Anna, who looks down at her hands, embarrassed and, now the shock is wearing off, in a fair bit of pain. "Hey Olaf, can you - can you give us a minute?"

Olaf nods and offers a cheery wave to both sisters before shuffling away.

Elsa waits until their friend has gone before casting another look around the dessert cemetery. After a moment, blinking at Anna with beautiful, delighted blue eyes, she says, "You did all this for me?"

Anna meets her gaze, just about, and sees that her sister's entire face is aglow. The flames of humiliation die a little. Despite herself, she smiles - a small smile – and gives a small, helpless shrug. "I tried. It turns out I'm not the _best_ baker in the world. Or even Arendelle. Certainly not Arendelle."

Elsa giggles, her hand at her mouth. "Oh Anna." She draws closer to her sister and reaches for her hands. Anna's throbbing flesh immediately object to the soft warmth of Elsa's fingers and Anna winces, flinching at the contact. Anna can almost hear the alarm bells go off in Elsa's head at the reaction. "Anna, what -" Elsa looks down, cradling Anna's open palms between them. "Oh Anna!" Elsa's lovely face becomes a delicate tapestry of concern and frustration - concern, because Anna is hurt, and frustration because Anna is hurt. A rush of warmth envelops Anna's heart. "Here, let me - "

The familiar, faint crackle of ice fills Anna's ears. Elsa carefully slips her hands back into Anna's, her fingers now supernaturally cool and super, _super_ soothing. Anna releases a long breath - _ahhhh_ - feeling the immediate sting leech from her burns like water retreating from the shore. After a moment she meets Elsa's worried, intensely observing gaze with a grateful smile.

"War wounds," she whispers.

Elsa nods, smiling tenderly. "Major Princess Anna of the Palace Kitchen Regiment."

Anna laughs.

They stand there for a long, silent moment as Elsa continues to draw the heat from Anna's injuries. And then, Elsa says, "You know, the whole palace smells like chocolate? When I woke up and saw you weren't with me, I went out into the hallway and... followed my nose down here." She blushes a little, needlessly embarrassed by the statement. Then she cast another look around. "This place might be an eyesore right now but - " she breathes in through her nose, slow and deep; a familiar, dreamy smile shapes her lips " - it smells _amazing_," she says. "We're going to be eating chocolate for breakfast for at least three days, aren't we?"

Anna shakes her head in apology. "Elsa look around, most of it is probably inedible. You deserve better. I mean, we can still have chocolate for breakfast but we should go into town and get - "

"Olaf said that was good," Elsa tilts her head toward the fallen would-be gateau. "Actually, he said it was _delicious_. And you know he likes what we like."

A protest - _uhh, Olaf is shamelessly biased_ - has barely made it to Anna's lips before Elsa is (gently, _gently_) pulling her around the counter and across the kitchen. They stand in front of the dismantled cake, basking in its tragic wonder: Anna's not-quite pièce de résistance.

"You hold onto that hand, okay?" Elsa instructs, removing her right hand from Anna's grasp, holding on with her left. "Don't let go," and Anna obeys without question, clasping her sister's carefully controlled, cool, cool palm as firmly as her 'war wounds' will allow. Elsa plucks a gooey chunk of cherry-chocolate from the counter top, and raises it to Anna's mouth. "Open up."

Anna's eyes widen. "Oh of course _I_ have to eat it first."

Elsa giggles. "Hey, trust yourself," she hushes, squeezing her hand (gently, _gently_). "Trust Olaf." Pause. "Trust me."

That's a lot of trust to give at such short notice, Anna thinks, but she gives it wholly and wholeheartedly - to Elsa most of all, always, and to Olaf. Trusting herself takes a little more effort, but what the heck. She closes her eyes, opens her mouth and lets Elsa delicately push the piece of gateau onto her tongue.

And she chews. And - oh...

Oh...

Her taste buds burst to life under the sticky, bittersweet chocolate-y goodness. "_Ohmygditmmphelicious_!" She exclaims, kind of, through that actually (really, truly) delicious mouthful of cake.

Elsa beams at her, visibly pleased for her, proud of her. She quickly, gently swipes a thumb over the corner of Anna's lips, wiping away a smudge of chocolate before popping a piece of the dessert into her own mouth.

Her eyes go round - comically round - and Anna swears she can see love hearts in her sister's eyes before they close in bliss.

Elsa _mmmms_ appreciatively.

Anna flushes with delight.

That one mouthful, she thinks, and the head-over-heels glow now emanating from her sister makes everything, the entire overambitious ambition, from ugly, anaemic profiteroles to her poor, scorched fingers, totally worth it.

"Happy Valentine's Day, your majesty," she says, when Elsa finally opens her eyes.

That dreamy smile makes a beautiful, most welcome return. "Happy Valentine's Day, Anna."

END


End file.
